• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1990.10a
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• pp.105-110
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• 1990

Effective maintenance system for national highway bridges has been requested due to increasing numbers of bridges. In this study, bridge data base is established in accordance with rating criteria for the structural conditions and functions of bridges. Maintenance system using PC-80386 hardware and ORACLE software is developed to rank the priority of either reconstruction or repairing of bridges and to provide with those information to bridge maintenance staff in order to perform bridge maintenance effectively. With this pre-establised data base and computerized maintenance system, data and information for planning of bridge construction could be obtained in times.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.641-653
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• 2008

This paper proposes a practical and realistic method to establish an optimal lifetime maintenance strategy for deteriorating bridges by considering the life-cycle performance as well as the life-cycle cost. The proposed method offers a set of optimal tradeoff maintenance scenarios among other conflicting objectives, such as minimizing cost and maximizing performance. A genetic algorithm is used to generate a set of maintenance scenarios that is a multi-objective combinatorial optimization problem related to the lifetime performance and the life-cycle cost as separate objective functions. A computer program, which generates optimal maintenance scenarios, was developed based on the proposed method using the life-cycle costs and the performance of bridges. The subordinate relation between bridge members has been considered to decide optimal maintenance sequence and a corresponding algorithm has been implemented into the program. The developed program has been used to present a procedure for finding an optimal maintenance scenario for steel-girder bridges on the Korean National Road. Through this bridge maintenance scenario analysis, it is expected that the developed method and program can be effectively used to allow bridge managers an optimal maintenance strategy satisfying various constraints and requirements.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.571-582
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• 2022

Optimal life-cycle management is a challenging issue for deteriorating regional bridges. Due to the complexity of regional bridge structural conditions and a large number of inspection and maintenance actions, decision-makers generally choose traditional passive management strategies. They are less efficiency and cost-effectiveness. This paper suggests a deep reinforcement learning framework employing double-deep Q-networks (DDQNs) to improve the life-cycle management of deteriorating regional bridges to tackle these problems. It could produce optimal maintenance plans considering restrictions to maximize maintenance cost-effectiveness to the greatest extent possible. DDQNs method could handle the problem of the overestimation of Q-values in the Nature DQNs. This study also identifies regional bridge deterioration characteristics and the consequence of scheduled maintenance from years of inspection data. To validate the proposed method, a case study containing hundreds of bridges is used to develop optimal life-cycle management strategies. The optimization solutions recommend fewer replacement actions and prefer preventative repair actions when bridges are damaged or are expected to be damaged. By employing the optimal life-cycle regional maintenance strategies, the conditions of bridges can be controlled to a good level. Compared to the nature DQNs, DDQNs offer an optimized scheme containing fewer low-condition bridges and a more costeffective life-cycle management plan.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.1158-1164
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• 2007

Recently, the demand on the practical application of life-cycle cost effectiveness for design and rehabilitation of civil infrastructure is rapidly growing unprecedentedly in civil engineering practice. Accordingly, it is expected that the life-cycle cost in the 21st century will become a new paradigm for all engineering decision problems in practice. However, in spite of impressive progress in the researches on the LCC, so far, most researches in Koreahave only focused on roadway bridges, which are not applicable to railway bridges. Thus, this paper presents the formulation models and methods for uncertainty-based LCCA for railroad bridges consideringboth objective statistical data available in the agency database of railroad bridges management and subjective data obtained form interviews with experts of the railway agency, which are used to anew uncertainty-based expected maintenance/repair costs including lifetime indirect costs. For reliable assessment of the life-cycle maintenance/repair costs, statistical analysis considering maintenance history data and survey data including the subjective judgments of railway experts on maintenance/management of railroad bridges, are performed to categorize critical maintenance items and associated expected costs and uncertainty-based deterioration models are developed. Finally, the formulation for simulation-based LCC analysis of railway bridges with uncertainty-based deterioration models are applied to the design-decision problem, which is to select an optimal bridge type having minimum Life-Cycle cost among various railway bridges types such as steel plate girder bridge, and prestressed concrete girder bridge in the basic design phase.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.499-521
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• 2016

In this paper, a probabilistic- and finite element-based approach to evaluate and predict the lifetime performance of reinforced concrete (RC) bridges undergoing various maintenance actions is proposed with the time-variant system reliability being utilized as a performance indicator. Depending on their structural state during the degradation process, the classical maintenance actions for RC bridges are firstly categorized into four types: Preventive type I, Preventive type II, Strengthening and Replacement. Preventive type I is used to delay the onset of steel corrosion, Preventive type II can suppress the corrosion process of reinforcing steel, Strengthening is the application of various maintenance materials to improve the structural performance and Replacement is performed to restore the individual components or overall structure to their original conditions. The quantitative influence of these maintenance types on structural performance is investigated and the respective analysis modules are written and inputted into the computer program. Accordingly, the time-variant system reliability can be calculated by the use of Monte Carlo simulations and the updated the program. Finally, an existing RC continuous bridge located in Shanghai, China, is used as an illustrative example and the lifetime structural performance with and without each of the maintenance types are discussed. It is felt that the proposed approach can be applied to various RC bridges with different structural configurations, construction methods and environmental conditions.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.14 no.5 s.60
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• pp.627-639
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• 2002

Bridge construction is almost complete in many countries. Thus, the government and highway agencies change their focus from constructing to maintaining. Effectively maintaining bridges require predicting their lifespan using a system reliability viewpoint. Likewise, maintenance models based on the system reliability concept should be developed. Thus, this study developed maintenance models for preventive maintenance and essential maintenance using system reliability and lifetime distributions. The optimal maintenance strategy for an existing bridge was obtained using the developed maintenance models.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.161-168
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• 2021

This paper is a maintenance system for bridge represented by Class 3 and other than by law bridges. Domestic bridge are divided into Class 1 & 2 bridges and Class 3 & other than by law bridges. The number of type 3 and other than by law bridges is very large. But, it is considered to be of relatively low importance compared to Class 1 & 2 Bridge Bridge. So, in this paper is propose a maintenance system and procedure for small & medium-sized bridges. However, because the number of small & medium-sized bridges is large, it is not possible to evaluate the performance of all bridges like Class 1 & 2 bridge. The reason is the lack of manpower and budget. Based on the Risk Matrix method, a maintenance procedure was created to select the bridge for which performance evaluation should be performed first. For this purpose, basic information of the bridge is used. And, the developed maintenance procedures were applied to the bridges in actual use.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.1132-1140
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• 2007

As it recently appears that Life Cycle Cost Analysis may be considered as new methodology for economic valuation of infrastructure many researches have been made to assess LCC(Life Cycle Cost) of each facility based on a reasonable methods. In general, LCC is composed of construction cost and expected maintenance repair cost. And especially, maintenance repair cost must be estimated to enhance the reliability through systematic and reasonable methods. However in Korea, because high speed railway steel bridges are recently constructed no direct statistical data are available for the account of the maintenance cost and then their maintenance characteristics are not linear yet. Therefore, the approach proposed in the paper utilizes a theoretical determination and degradation of the corrosion and fatigue of the bridges based on Rahgozar et al.(2006)'s model on fatigue notch factor considering into the corrosion to incorporate the corrosion effect into the fatigue strength reduction model. And then, the corresponding probability of failure is calculated in terms of the reliability index using S-N curve to formulate the fatigue limit state. Therefore, this paper proposes the minimum Life Cycle Cost through optimum maintenance plan analysis of high-speed railway steel bridges under construction. Finally, this paper reviews the proposed model in oder to confirm the applicability and feasibility by appling it to high speed railway steel bridges under construction

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.221-232
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• 1999

This study investigates the applicability and design scheme of fieldbus network in the measurement system used for precise and safe construction as well as efficient maintenance of bridges. In order to maximize the function and performance of bridge monitoring system, this study introduces the CAN(Controller Area Network), one of the fieldbus protocols, in the measurement system of bridges. This study presents the implementation method of CAN on the monitoring system of bridge, and also proposes a bandwidth allocation scheme for the design of network. The validity of the proposed CAN design method is verified through a simulation experiment. It is shown that the CAN can be readily applicable to the measurement system of bridges.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.40-49
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• 2021

This study surveyed damage to small and medium-sized RC slab bridges, the largest in number in Korea. Four common types of damage were identified, and their static and dynamic structural behaviors were examined through structural analysis. The degree of damage was selected as an analysis parameter for three superstructures of RC slab bridges. After structural analysis, a damage assessment process was proposed that can be used as the basis for establishing maintenance yplans for these bridges. The results of the present study can be used for the safety management of RC slab bridges, classified as bridges suspected of safety flaws or requiring maintenance in load-carrying capacity tests.